Reba the Husky Lab Mix

Story: I had the most beautiful girl for a good portion of my life! She was stubborn, demanding, pushy, and the most AMAZING dog I have ever met! At the end of April, I realized that she wasn’t eating as much as she used to (She was 105 pounds, so she could eat!) so I took her to the vet. It turned out that she had a very large tumor. They couldn’t tell where it was exactly from the X-Rays. If it was in her spleen, we would do surgery, but if it was in her liver, the vet recommended just making her comfortable. I took her to a specialist to get an ultrasound, and it turned out that the large, baseball sized tumor was in her liver, and it was spreading. There was another tennis ball sized tumor in another lobe of her liver. They could make no guarantees or even estimates about how long she had left. The hard part was watching all of the other dogs who were coming into the specialty center who looked really sick and decrepit, knowing they would likely outlive my dog who still seemed healthy and playful.

All of this time, aside from a drop in appetite, my Reba girl had never seemed sick. She seemed happy, she played, tail wagging. No one could ever believe it when I told them that she was going on 11. 4 days after the diagnosis, I got home from work and she just could not stop vomiting. She was just so sick. It was terrifying and I KNEW that I couldn’t help her. As I was crying because it hit home that my baby was sick, I realized that she would eventually start having more miserable days like this if I let it go on. I couldn’t do that to her.

The next day, May 1st, I had to put my best friend to sleep. On the way to the vet, there were so many times that I wanted to turn the car around and go back home because she seemed fine that day. I had to keep reminding myself that she ISN’T fine, and it would be selfish to let her go through so many sick, painful nights. Before taking her into the vet, we gave her a happy moment. We went to Five Guys and got her a bacon cheeseburger. Being the stubborn dog she was, she ate the burger, and literally threw the bacon at us because she didn’t want it! Leave it to my Reba-girl to be the one dog who could make us laugh minutes before the saddest moment in my life.